n the wake of the attacks, virtually every article rushes to assure us that they're 'not representative of Islam' but in truth they are representative of a peculiar and perverse violent strain which certainly exists, and in Nigeria, managed to kill another 200 or so people while we were watching Paris. The core truth is that the exhausted illusion of 'multicultural' Europe is fading away fast, and I'm surprised that more commentators don't note that the the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred immediately after the huge Pegida demonstrations in Germany, with their uncomfortable and cringeworthy insistence on a 'Judeo-Christian' Europe. My own fear is that they will succeed in destroying the open society that took centuries of agonizing warfare to achieve. Cologne Cathedral thought they made a grand gesture by turning their lights out for the demonstration there; they missed the point that that is what most of these people wanted to achieve in the first place. Many kind people here have dutifully posted the 'Je suis Charlie' or 'Je suis Juif' meme, as freedom of speech is easy to praise, but the root causes are far less comfortable to face.
n the wake of the attacks, virtually every article rushes to assure us that they're 'not representative of Islam' but in truth they are representative of a peculiar and perverse violent strain which certainly exists, and in Nigeria, managed to kill another 200 or so people while we were watching Paris. The core truth is that the exhausted illusion of 'multicultural' Europe is fading away fast, and I'm surprised that more commentators don't note that the the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred immediately after the huge Pegida demonstrations in Germany, with their uncomfortable and cringeworthy insistence on a 'Judeo-Christian' Europe. My own fear is that they will succeed in destroying the open society that took centuries of agonizing warfare to achieve. Cologne Cathedral thought they made a grand gesture by turning their lights out for the demonstration there; they missed the point that that is what most of these people wanted to achieve in the first place. Many kind people here have dutifully posted the 'Je suis Charlie' or 'Je suis Juif' meme, as freedom of speech is easy to praise, but the root causes are far less comfortable to face.
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